That’s basically my question… Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but it doesn’t really make any sense to me that an Unholy Death Knight is a pet class in a thematic perspective.
The way I view an Unholy Death Knight is that they raise undead zombies out of the ground to help fight for them… Why would they keep one specific mindless zombie as a pet? It just seems weird… At that point why wouldn’t they have an entire undead army following them around rather than 1 specific one?
I personally wish they would move Unholy away from being a pet class but you can still keep the thematic aspects of raising an undead army to fight for you… That could open up the spec to have more focus on the disease/rot aspects.
What do y’all think?
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I don’t think the pet is a huge consideration in Unholy’s power/fantasy budget outside of PvP where it is useful as a stun bot. It’s mainly there as a means to activate Dark Transformation which enables all of our other pet spells like Apoc, Army, and Garg.
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Its not a pet class, its the pet specialization.
This doesnt matter, what matters is how Blizzard designed it and it was a pet spec since Wrath. Perma ghoul, gargoyle, dark transformation gained in cata.
They dont, its always a different mindless ghoul.
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You’re right, pet spec*
I understand it was a pet spec since Wrath, but it didn’t even make sense back then. I just don’t see a Death Knight having any permanent zombie pets following them around… Am I the only one who can’t make sense of this?
I’m not speaking on gameplay mechanics or the history of the class/spec within WoW, I’m just purely speaking on what an Unholy Death Knight represents lore-wise and thematically. Could you imagine Death Knight Arthus having a permanent ghoul following him around? Or really any Death Knight in lore?
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I’m pretty sure Arthas’ fight in ICC and Halls of Reflection featured him raising undead and setting them after us quite a bit.
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You’re right. My contention is not with a Death Knight raising the dead to fight their enemies, such as the Death Knight ultimate ability in wc3… I think that’s awesome. But, it’s the idea of having 1 permanent zombie following a Death Knight around.
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I do find it a little obnoxious when pet damage is too large of a slice of a melee class’s damage output. I think they’re shaking up UDK’s talents enough in TWW that the Knight itself should be a larger portion of the combined damage.
Truly I’d like to see the dark transformation super zombie updated to modern standards as well.
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Thassarian had a minion that he kept around… dont know where that went.
Siouxsie had a pet that she yelled at. There have been others throughout.
Fits the theme to me.
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I just want a glyph so I can have a banshee or val’kyr instead of ghoul and skelly
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Unholy wasn’t always like this though. It used to balance between pets, diseases, and strikes.
They unfortunately took a hammer to all of that in Legion and gave us a more shallow playstyle. Festering wounds may have been intended to give us disease play but were implemented pretty haphazardly and never really improved.
I think a lot of people would love to get back to having more focus on diseases/rot, but unfortunately we’re not getting the necessary dev time.
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As someone whos mained dk from wotk to present, pets were dominant damage while strikes were more for buff/debuff. Even the best builds in wotlk didnt use SS unless you had a leggo because auto attack/pet/disease/dnd were your damage and you were constantly waiting for runes.
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So this is just my perspective, If I was a DK and found a living person I had just killed to be someone I had hated when I was alive or if they were particularly hard to kill I would find great pleasure in making them a Zombie pet that I get to boss around or just watch become fodder. Unholy was supposed to be the closest we got to a Necromancer in WoW. So at least for me it makes sense.
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Playing cata death knight vs retail deathknight feels night and day.
Cata managed to balance the pet power with the deathknight power nicely.
Deathcoil felt good to press, all the strikes felt good to press and bloody festering strike didn’t feel like the most annoying mechanic
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Anyone ever seen what an Unholy pet “does”
Don’t ever call this a pet class.
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Diseases never really did all that much. They were in reality a type of maintenance buff for the DK in the form of a dot. Starting in cata you wanted to extend them to 1m durations so outbreak would be up again. But the diseases themselves weren’t anything to write home about.
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My pet not turning into a book and coming with me in AV has triggered me more than I’d like to admit.
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I agree… I’m very curious and would love to hear what everyone thinks, but for me Unholy just feels kind of thematically confused, like it’s trying to do tackle too many themes at once… Which makes sense because the idea of an Unholy Death Knight encompasses several thematic ideas which all make sense but might be hard to provide all the options for. I think they have done a decent job as the spec feels somewhat coherent and so far it seems a bit better in War Within. But, it just feels like it’s lacking. What do you all think they could do?
Personally, my idea of an Unholy Death Knight is a Knight of Death who spreads diseases to rot their enemies and raises undead warriors to fight. I guess that’s what Unholy is? I would like to see the spec moved away from being a “pet spec” and more of a “minion spec”, kind of like Demo locks (minus the pet)… And then put more emphasis on the disease/rot aspects. You can still have talents/abilities that buff your summoned minions, maybe the minions can help spread diseases/festering wounds if they stick with the Festering wound thing (Which I have read that many DK are not a fan of).
This is all coming from a somewhat casual, around 2k PvP Player, so they definitely shouldn’t cater the game to me… I’m sure people have much better ideas than me but those are my initial thoughts.
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So is this a pvp, pve just in general UH DK
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I’m just trying to speak to the theme of UH DK in general, nothing specific to pve or pvp
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Ok thank you. Cant tell you how many of these type threads are out there and the OP is talking about pvp without saying it so he gets pve answers and yea just goes a bit down hill.
I will say I do like the unholy having a pet in general you saw my post where I explained why I like it. But you are right about the pets being most of the damage. That is not a good thing imo. IMO the festering wounds generation needs to be reworked…I think Festering Strike should be an aoe hit or that Outbreak should spread festering wounds.
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